Our bookshelves are buckling under the sheer weight of concrete volumes, but Blue Crow Media’s latest treatise on the topic is at least lightweight – in form if not in subject. Brutalist Berlin is a love letter to German concrete, an exploration of fifty key structures that also tell the tale of the capital’s tumultuous twentieth century.
A spread from Brutalist Berlin
Autobahnüberbauung Schlangenbader Straße, George Heinrichs / Gerhard and Klaus Krebs, 1976-81. Containing over 1,000 apartments, this massive West Berlin structure was designed as a city within a city
Flick through the pages of 'Brutalist Berlin'
As the original city of rain-streaked romance and all forms of subversion, Berlin is struck through with sentimental, overpowering architectural gloom. Its plethora of post-war Brutalism either helps or hinders this image, depending on your stance on this most divisive of all building materials. Naturally, author, photographer and architectural historian Felix Torkar is on the side of the aggregate angels.
A spread from Brutalist Berlin
Brutalist Berlin is both guidebook and history lesson, an expanded version of Torkar’s Brutalist Berlin map (2021). It’s part of a series that has allowed Blue Crow to effectively corner the market in charting and mapping the world’s dwindling stock of Brutalist masterpieces, from Paris, Boston, Montreal and London. The new book on Berlin follows on from Brutalist Interiors and is part of the publisher’s pivot to monographs as well as maps.
A spread from Brutalist Berlin
Some key buildings from Brutalist Berlin
Kirche Maria Frieden, Günter Maiwald, 1967-69. One of the city’s boldest contemporary churches. The interior contains a triptych by Otto Dix
Gemeindezentrum Apostel Johannes (St John the Apostle Community Centre), Gerd Neumann / Dietmar Grötzebach / Günter Plessow, 1967-71. Although the exterior has been altered, the interior of this concrete church is richly sculptural
Isotherme Kugellabore (Isothermal Spherical Laboratories), Horst Welser, 1959-61. These East German scientific structures were built for aerospace material development but now stand as a memory of the Cold War
Brutalist Berlin, Dr Felix Torkar, £20/€25, Blue Crow Media, BlueCrowMedia.com
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Meet the landscape studio reviving the eco-brutalist Barbican ConservatoryLondon-based Harris Bugg Studio is working on refreshing the Barbican Conservatory as part of the brutalist icon's ongoing renewal; we meet the landscape designers to find out more
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